Tech —

OS X 10.10 Yosemite: The Ars Technica Review

For the first time in forever, the Mac could be noticed by someone.

Animation

Many standard controls now have state-change animations in Yosemite. The various fades and zooms are fast and subtle, for the most part, though the shrink-to-fit focus ring animation might be a bit over the top. See for yourself in the movie below.

Standard control animations in Yosemite. Could be worse…

Is this really the same Apple that, just last year, disabled the Time Machine menu bar icon’s animation, presumably for energy-saving purposes? To be fair, there is a significant difference between brief animations triggered by user input and continuous animations that run whether the user is present or not. Though Yosemite may indulge in the former, Apple’s crusade against the latter continues.

Consider the default button in a dialog box. Since the very first version of OS X, default buttons have changed their appearance many times but have always retained a subtle pulsing animation. That animation is gone in Yosemite; default buttons are just as static as non-default buttons. (The Time Machine menu bar icon animation has not returned, either.)

Icons

Fears of an iOS-style round rect icon revolution on the Mac may have been unfounded, but Apple is trying to discipline the world of OS X icons. While one icon shape has been deemed insufficient, Apple believes three shapes should just about do it: circle, rectangle, and tilted rectangle.

Launchpad, System Preferences, and Font Book demonstrate Apple’s three recommended icon shapes.

The circle and rectangle shapes are long-standing traditions on OS X. The tilted rectangle is slightly different than the icon style it replaces in that the projection is now orthographic; areas further from the “camera” are no longer smaller, as they would be in a perspective projection.

Most of Apple’s tilted rectangle icons still represent tangible things: pads of paper, tiny books, photographs, gadgets. It’s the surface details that really differentiate Yosemite’s icons. Visual simplification is the order of the day, and details that don’t read well at small icon sizes have been excised. The new style makes the icons look slightly more, well, iconic. There’s also a bit of mood lighting at work here, as if each icon exists in an eternal “magic hour” just before sunset.

Icon evolution: Mavericks in the top row, Yosemite in the bottom row. The Yosemite strategy: omit needless details; matte finish instead of glossy; no vanishing point.

Some application icons have not been updated at all, but among those that have been refreshed, I see only a few misses. Terminal has been robbed of all character and flair, now appearing as an almost featureless black rectangle whose connection to Apple’s latest display hardware takes a sharp eye (and maybe a Retina display) to discern. The chunky QuickTime Player icon introduced five years ago has been revised—for the better, I think—but it’s still not much of a looker. If I really want to pick nits (and I do), the FaceTime icon’s telephone badge obscures the camera shape, producing a green jumble. (Both shapes are also anachronisms.)

Finally, consider that most quintessential of icons, the humble folder. No longer open a crack like its predecessor (or if it is open, then orthographic projection hides the fact), the Yosemite folder is, perhaps, less inviting. But the shape is less noticeable than the color: a swimming-pool-caliber blue-green.

Folder icons: Mavericks on the left, Yosemite on the right. Out with the old and in with the (brighter) blue.

Of all the visual elements in Yosemite, this is the one that doesn’t seem to fit in with the rest. Instead of being bathed in the light of a sunset, these folders look like color chips from a ’70s bathroom tile catalog. And there’s not much harmony between folders and the highlight colors used on controls like default buttons and pop-up menus. Still, I’m willing to believe a little friction can add interest to a design.

John Siracusa
John Siracusa has a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Boston University. He has been a Mac user since 1984, a Unix geek since 1993, and is a professional web developer and freelance technology writer. Emailsiracusa@arstechnica.com//Twitter@siracusa